


To Assign Words to the Unspeakable

by daughterofalderaan



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:15:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29071638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daughterofalderaan/pseuds/daughterofalderaan
Summary: He knows not exactly what he will have to tell her, but he will have to tell her something before the day is out.Set during 1x8
Relationships: Alec Hardy & Ellie Miller
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	To Assign Words to the Unspeakable

The universe… it put him in his place.

It was too much to have believed that he’d relocate himself and be a mere spec of the landscape of the coast. To have thought he'd be somewhere new, develop no attachments, and encounter no novel stressors.

This beast of a town told him who was boss. It wasn’t him.

It was all fruitless. The insisting on surnames, and rejecting nonessential socialization, and counting on this position being clear-cut and easy. He ought to have known, when he first arrived and experienced the foreboding familiarity of these roads and their layout.

He intended to keep an eye on Claire. He was going to attempt to put some pieces of his life back together. Any that would fit.

Instead, he was now going to have to tell a woman that a member of her family was involved in the murder of an 11 year old boy and he wasn’t going to be able to distance himself from her grief.

The aggrieved was going to be somebody he pored over papers, screens, and thin air with. Week after week, consistently near enough to smell the coffee in her breath. The person he's been observing lightly flicking switches off within herself as they have carried on.

He didn’t even try to sleep. It didn’t matter; he didn’t care about bags under his eyes that have darkened linearly. After the following day, he was off the books. He lay still in his bed the full duration of the night.

Day broke. He went to work. He got new intel. He went to the sea. 

It was inexplicable, the strength with which he felt his mother’s presence. On that of all days. 

He went to the spot where it felt the most like the memory could have happened. Where Mum and him sat on the sand, migrated forward, him shoulder-deep, water waist-level for her.

He picked up his phone and requested that Miller meet him there. 

She arrived, hampering down perplexion at the setting.

By the end of the day, he was going to transfer it all onto her. He had to humanize himself, for her sake. For his, too. 

He said said what came to mind, not really caring that he was divulging things that were personal, were supposed to be only his.

Her phone rang. He still didn’t know what he'd been wanting to convey, but he was out of time. He steeled himself for the next step.

He dreaded the end of this case. He prayed it was the end.


End file.
